


Rest

by naemara



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst, F/M, M/M, Older/Aged Up characters, Reibert - Freeform, hospital au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-02-28
Packaged: 2018-05-23 16:35:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6122662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/naemara/pseuds/naemara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After a devastating accident Bertolt waits for news.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rest

**Author's Note:**

> I think this might become a longer series?

Bertolt had always been unusually good at hospitals. He’s always been able to blend in, to sink back and watch, observe. Be unobtrusive, but also be there. But Reiner had always been good at the other parts, the human parts, there for people even when they didn’t know they needed him.

He could really use Reiner at that moment. But Reiner was on the other side of swinging glass doors and machines that beeped incessantly. And Bertolt was there in the hospital waiting room, watching as doctors and nurses ran in every direction except to him, to tell him something, anything. He was waiting. 

Alone. 

Unscathed. 

Miraculously whole.  
And that’s where Bertolt’s whole good at hospitals facade begins to crack. It’s been hours since the accident, hours since the flashing lights and angry sirens had brought them here. Too long since they’d taken… Bertolt shudders at the memory, suddenly freezing, the air conditioning making every hair on his arms stand on end.

“Hey.” Bertl turns, his heart caught up somewhere between his throat and his chest. The pounding fervor subsides when he sees it’s only Marco, not a doctor coming to give him news that might break him in a way he might not ever recover from. 

“What happened?” And then Marco is across the waiting room in a flash and he pulls Bertolt into a chair. Marco’s always been good like that, even in the days when they were two random freshman brought together by chance and a housing lottery.

“So…” Bertolt lets the air out of his lungs. He doesn’t want to talk about it, and instead he buries his head in his hands, comforted by the darkness. When he can’t see, it makes what’s happening less real. “Drunk driver. T-boned our car.”

Marco breathes in sharply and Bertl feels him stiffen. “Fuck.”

“And Reiner took the brunt of the damage.” Bertl shudders again. He can’t keep talking and Marco knows him better than to pry. Marco’s there for him if he feels like speaking, but his tongue has become glue, stuck by his own fears and uncertainties. 

“Sasha sent you this.” Marco holds up a thermos. “Soup.” 

“Oh.” It’s late, Bertolt realizes, past dinner, the sun down and darkness shadowing the windows. He takes the thermos, holding it in his hands but unsure of what to do.

“Where is he?” A woman’s gruff voice echoes through the waiting room. 

Reiner’s cousin, and his former roommate, before he’d gone to live in Bertl’s tiny apartment, before they found their own place. Annie has her own authority, stern but compassionate. And when Bertl sees her he knows he’s going to break.

A strangled cry, keening and mournful, manages to escape from his chest. And then all the things he’s been holding together, all the little lies he’s been telling himself to keep going, all shatter around him like sugar-pane glass. 

Annie, to her credit, doesn’t ask what happened. She’s sweaty, still in her sports bra and hoodie, racerback damp from exertion. She must have checked her phone after teaching at the boxing studio.

“I’m sorry,” she says and Bertl knows she’s excusing her lateness as much as she’s apologizing to him. She’s tiny but the hug she pulls him into actually manages to dwarf him, to leave him small. He shudders on her shoulder, aware that if he keeps going this way he won’t be able to make any decisions, and he needs to be clear-headed and he needs to do the right thing, but he’s so tired. 

So he counts to five before he lets the numbness settle over him again. Marco gets up to get them all coffee, cheap and bitter from the vending machine and Bertl doesn’t let his life, his memories of coffee in the press and sitting and watching the sun rise, overwhelm him. It’s hard but he does it. 

“I don’t know how long they’ll be,” he says, almost like an apology, but Annie scowls at his tone.

“Does it matter?” She stretches out her legs, clearly prepared for the long haul. “I’m not going anywhere until we have answers. Mikasa can hold down the studio, and Armin can watch the brats.” She wrinkles her nose at the mention of her kids. “But family is here and damned if I go.”

Bertl sighs again. And Marco comes back with coffee, another thing Bertl’s only able to hold and not consume. 

The clock ticks and ticks again, people rushing in, rushing out. They’re all in various states of exhaustion, Bertolt so tired from not crying, from not screaming, from not raging, that he can barely stay awake. But it’s not as though sleep is something that will come easy tonight. Every time he closes his eyes he sees lights, he feels the swerve of the car, the impact. And then he jerks forward like he’s on the worlds worst roller coaster.

“Mr. Hoover-Braun,” A sonorous voice reverbs through the waiting room. Bertl blinks, pushing Annie off his chest. She snaps awake, at full attention. He’s tall and blond with an authority that settles around his shoulders like a cape. “Dr. Erwin Smith.” He doesn’t smile, just stares down at Bertolt across his roman nose, his symmetrical features. 

“Yes? What?” Bertolt’s chest tightens and he realizes that he’s shaking. There’s a strange wave riding below his skin as though Reiner is both alive and not alive and only Dr. Smith’s words will break this truly awful paradox. 

“It was difficult,” Dr. Smith says. His gaze never leaves Bertolt’s face, but his expression remains bland and inscrutable. “Your husband is quite a fighter.”

Annie snorts at this. Reiner is the best of them, of all of them. Marco’s death grip on Bertl’s shoulder intensifies.

“Yes…” Bertl can barely talk. 

“Head trauma, punctured lung, four cracked ribs. He’s stable but critical. These next twenty-four hours are among the most important.”

“Can I see him?” Bertl drops the uneaten thermos of soup, letting it roll under the plastic chairs.

“It will do him good to hear a familiar voice.” Dr. Smith gestures Bertolt forward and for the first time since he was in triage the double doors swing to let him through. 

 

Everything about the hospital is anodyne, antiseptic. Sterile. It’s all the opposite of everything Reiner loved, the opposite of his loud laughs, his wide grins, the way he cared for everyone and anyone around him. It ties Bertl’s stomach into knots. Dr. Smith leads him into a small room and he sees Reiner for the first time since the paramedics took him away. 

Reiner isn’t moving, he’s so still that it’s the antithesis of Reiner in life. Tubes and wires and monitors connect to him in places Bertolt never even thought to imagine. He’s bruised, wrapped in bandages and immobile. But he’s alive.

Bertl sinks onto a plastic chair, even more uncomfortable than the ones in the waiting room, if that was possible and takes Reiner’s hand in both of his. A faint memory of breath rises from his husband and a sliver of hope cracks through all of Bertolt’s walls. 

“We’ll get through this,” he says. “We always do.“

Reiner’s always been strong for Bertolt, and now it’s his turn.


End file.
